Welcome back Kingsnapped! I'm sure a lot of folks here have questions regarding Apple retail.
Question #1/2 - What did you do there and why did you leave?
I was a Mac Specalist (regular guy on the floor). Catch was, I was in school too much to go full time. They had me doing a lot of stuff as a Creative, and a lot of Genius stuff, because I was very good at both those positions. Unfortunately, my store did not want to hire a part time Creative, so my title never changed.
I left because of a combination of this, and because my freelance work was starting to overtake the income and hours at Apple.
How was the management? Is it a good company to work for as far as the retail side goes?
The management was awesome, tons and tons better than the restraunts/nightclubs I worked at before. A lot of them came from outside Apple, so they needed some catching up on the technical side of things. Every new manager got up to speed very quickly. From a managerial standpoint, they did an excellent job. My only gripe comes from Apple's constant changes in how they schedule shifts. In the past year, they've changed it more times than I can remember. This caused a lot of headaches, but we got through it.
1) What was the pay like?
2) Did you get to steal any cool things?
3) Did you sex it up with any hot-but-dumb Geniuses?
4) How many times a day did you lie to members of the public to try and make a sale?
5) What are you doing now?
1. Pay was above average retail, but nothing wonderful for a lowly part time specialist.
2. A lot of people from Apple read these boards.
3. We just got our first female genius a couple weeks ago, but I did manage to get in a relationship and move in with one of my co-workers.
4. We are not commissioned at all for our sales, so I had no reason to lie to the public. There are times when I'm sure that I was a lot more truthful than Apple would like (don't get an fm transmitter... don't get office "pro"... get your ram somewhere cheaper.... no, you don't need product "x"). Apple's product is good enough that we don't really need to make stuff up.
Did they say "if you speak about anything you saw here we will kill you."
No, but I was told I'd be arrested if I blogged/posted about working for them, as long as I was there. My NDA doesn't end for five years, so I still have to be careful about big stuff.
